Vegetation of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, 1935-1938

During the establishment of Great Smoky Mountains as a National Park in the mid 1930's, the National Park Service hired Frank H. Miller as an assistant forester to conduct a vegetation survey of the proposed park area. At that time, Miller and his crews sampled over 1,378 plots. This data set is the only known sampling effort that has occurred across the park's entire landscape. This paper quantitatively summarizes and classifies the overstory data collected by Miller. At the time of the sampling, Castanea dentata was the dominant species even though the chestnut blight had become established in the area of the park between 1925 and 1936. Sixteen vegetation types were identified ranging from the low elevation, xeric Pinus rigida type to the high elevation, mesic Abies fraseri type. Comparison of the whole park classification derived from the Miller data with those of other, less inclusive, studies illustrates the importance of whole park analysis for a complete understanding of the park's vegetation.

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